Crafting For Those Dedicated to Experimentation

Wool

Every October the National Needle Arts Association holds an event that they call Spinzilla. This year it will be held Monday October 3rd until Sunday October 7th. The singular goal of this spinning time is to get as much yarn spun, and plied if that is your jam, within that time frame. Nothing that has been previously spun counts toward your total yardage. My personal goal is to spin a mile, or 1760 yards. Fortunately plying is counted, so if you have 3 singles that you have plied together (and all of it has to have been spun within the week of Spinzilla) then you measure the yardage of the finished 3 ply skein and multiply it by 4 (spinning each of the 3 singles as well as spinning the ply).

September is when participants in Spinzilla can begin registering for teams, and paying their registration fees. There is a minimal cost to join, 15 or 25 something like that, and the fee goes toward supporting programs that promote the needle arts among the younger generation. There are prizes donated toward the winners in particular categories. You can spin rogue, and not join a team. If you join a team then your entire team works toward the goal of spinning the most yardage you can. I believe that there are other prizes such as most creative spin, most individual yardage, etc.

This is a really fun event that promotes spinning in all different forms. My only goal is to beat my spinning from the year before. This year I believe that means that I will need to spin more than 2,240 yards. To this end I plan on spending most of September plying off my bobbins, carding the wool that I have into rolags so that they are easier to spin, and ensuring that my wheel is in the best shape it can be. I recently received information from the Schacht Spindle Company, who produced my wheel, about how to perform a minor repair which has my wheel purring.

I am getting really excited about Spinzilla, and will be posting more as I get my bobbins cleared off and spin some!

I managed to add at least 13 new breeds to my fiber study. There was one booth that had over 60 breeds, but mostly unwashed wool. Since my mother has COPD (and is recovering from double Pneumonia) I am unwilling to bring unwashed fleece into the house. While I am certain that the sheperds do their best, Wool Washer’s Disease is also known as Anthrax, so I am not going to take chances.

Below please find some of my amazing finds, I cannot wait to get started spinning them!

Above are my two braids of Rambouillet from two different vendors. As you can see one is white and combed top while the other is a natural brown and I believe carded. The preparations and probably micron count are so very different but both are extremely springy. I cannot wait to get my hands on them to test and spin!

Above is my Tunis top, I have half of this section already spun into a single, I hope to ply and create samples over this weekend. It was an amazing spin, if a bit coarse. The dyed blues and pinks have mixed together in places to create an amazing purple effect that I am fascinated to see plied.

The extremely rare hog island I obtained is extremely full of vegetable matter. The texture is very springy and I am looking forward to working with this fiber, but I also believe I might try to use the Hackle to get out a lot of the vegetable matter before attempting to spin this fiber.

I must have jiggled the camera an extreme amount while trying to photograph this Black Welsh, but the fiber is divine anyway. A little coarse, but with that deep black color who cares?

I managed to obtain lincoln roving as pictured here, and lincoln lamb locks as pictured below. I will admit I made a mistake, the lincoln lamb locks are not the beautiful long locks I envisioned, they are quite short and I will probably use them to add texture to a batt instead of flicking them open for a true worsted yarn as I first envisioned. The roving is luscious, though a bit coarser than I was expecting.

This half pound of Karukal is just begging me to sink my fingers into it’s pretty softness and spin like the wind. Soon, I promise soon!

This beautiful black braid of Zwartables is going to be a blast to spin, again it is on the coarser side of things, but who knows what it will do once it is spun and washed. The guessing is half of the fun!

I went a little overboard with the Wensleydale, but I cannot for the life of me regret it. I have this amazing half pound that I can use to spin worsted and see how well the finished yarn takes to dye as well as a braid of yellow Wensleydale near the bottom of the post that I can spin up and see the different shades of yellow pop out!

This braid of Textel seems to be on the downy side of wool, it should be a fun, soft spin, and the resulting yarn will be amazing (in its own way just like the rest of the yarns).

At the Coopworth booth they didn’t have any prepared roving but they did have an amazing selection of curls. I love how they look in their bags and did manage to comb out a tiny portion on my new hackle. They comb out beautifully, I think that as I have time I will pick apart the locks that I can find for combing and then use the drum carder for the rest. This will give me a great chance to explore differences in preparation and how they effect the finished product. So much fun and so much to learn!

One of my patrons assured me that I already had some Finn that they spun as a part of their breed sample. Oh well, I didn’t have it written down as a breed that I own, but even so this is such a fluffy bunch (and I was able to practice on an electric wheel for the first time with some skirted finn at the Folk Art Booth, so there is a special memory in this wool already).

This mohair along with the pink locks below were obtained at a booth with two amazing ladies that offered to let me go see their goats anytime I wanted. Even though I don’t live in Maryland I am tempted anyway! At least I have this amazing roving and curls to play with!

No one ever told me that Cormo is one of the softest breeds ever. I don’t know how this is going to spin up, but for now it is like petting my faux angora, so soft and beautiful!

The Cotswold below is such a delight to pet. I cannot wait to spin it up. The Ross Farm was one of two booths at which I found Four different Breeds that I had not spun yet. It was so much fun finding these different companies that raised or processed different heritage breeds.

This fiber is like trying to spin very coarse hair. I have not gotten a chance to even pull it out of the bag other than the tail sticking out the top but I can already tell that spinning this is going to be interesting. I cannot wait!

The last, but certainly not least, bit of fiber I purchased was some Superwash Targhee from a vendor that is friends with my father’s cousin who took me to Maryland Sheep and Wool on Saturday. The colors are interesting but more than that I love spinning Targhee for it’s springy texture. I am not thrilled that it is superwash, I have heard that some people have skin troubles with the chemicals used to make it superwash, but I look forward to working with it anyway.

So, there you have it, my stash haul from Maryland Sheep and Wool. I cannot for the life of me believe that it was two weeks ago already. Oh well, more time to save up for next year!

I am on the final stretch of getting ready for my trip. My sibling, who is going to come up and keep an eye on Mom while I’m gone, let me know that I can have a carryon and a purse so I don’t have to worry too much about that. I am getting really weird about this.

I have made sure that I have enough room in my favorite Timbuk2 bag to hold my yarn that I am trading Buffalo Wool Co. for a discount on a skein of their yarn, as well as all of the bags I am hoping to take since many of the vendors do not provide bags, and the first aid kit I picked up for this trip. I have a bunch of little wallets to squirrel away my money so that I do not spend it all at once and so that I can keep track of how I am doing with the spending. My personal grooming equipment is in a plastic box that I plan on putting in my suitcase. There are two pairs of sneakers that I picked up with good arch support so that my plantar fasciitis doesn’t flare up during the trip. It is quite painful when the muscle in the arch of your foot is pulled so tight you cannot sleep.

I plan on packing my pill container as well as a list of the medications I take so that the TSA doesn’t have any reason to be concerned. I know, I’m a bit obsessed. I messaged with my second cousins to see if they have any advice, and now I can only hope that things are going to go well. I’ve got a great class to teach tomorrow and then I’ve got three more days of work to get through before I will be winging my way off to Maryland.

This has been a very exciting week. Let me start with the parts not mentioned in the title of this post:

My copy of “51 Yarns to Spin Before you Cast Off” By Jacey Boggs Faulkner has arrived, and I have submitted my ‘Default Yarn’ for her competition. So far I adore this book, although I’m only about 20 pages in. I plan on reading more today, and writing a review as soon as I can. For my submission on Ravelry I used my current favorite skein from the Paradise Fibers Olympic Spin, and mentioned that I am more likely to crochet than spin. Jacey Boggs Faulkner asked if I’d share what I crochet, *squee* so now I’m working like mad to crochet up a shawl using that yarn. I’m loving how the shawl is turning out and really hope it will be done for Maryland.

I added a listing of my spindles owned/desired to my leather notebook I’m taking with me for MS&WF, trying to think of what else to put in there.

Ordered & received little presents for my Aunts who are hosting and hauling me for MS&WF.

Will finish ordering tickets for all three of us to get into the festival Friday.

My first guild meeting of the year we are going to start a lace project, it should be a ton of fun.

Okay, on to the titular subjects.

For my first dyeing class of the year I created samples. Part of what I hope to get across to the students is that the dyeing is only the beginning of their fiber journey, it changes so very drastically from step to step that you cannot even begin to predict where your fiber will end up. Not to mention that since it really is just wool, spinning is not the only place that your fiber can end up. wet felting, needle felting, or just using it as an applique. They are all viable choices, but if you want to spin it, the results can be very different that your starting dyed fiber. I know, that was almost like a mini class, lol. I dyed up some samples and carded half of each color into rolags. This shows how very different the carded rolag is from the original dyed fiber. Then for one of the colorways, the pink at the top of the post, I spun one of the rolags into a mini skein of yarn. I don’t have a photo of the mini skein yet, but it again shows how different the fiber is. I am really looking forward to this first class!

Now the other half of my title, Akerworks Bobbin. I received my collapsible Akerworks Woolee Winder compatible bulky bobbin for my Schacht Ladybug. I absolutely adore it. My minor, well for most people it would be minor but it was driving me insane, problem with the WooleeWinder bobbins was the rattle. To be entirely fair and honest it wasn’t really a bad rattle, it didn’t shake the teeth out of your head or anything, it was just this noise while I was spinning. Since I love the convenience of not having to stop to change hooks all the time and still wind up with a nice even bobbin, I thought I would just have to deal with the noise. Not so! I still use Lithium Grease on my shaft and orifice, but the rattle is just about gone. I have a squeak that I think is due to either uneven foot height on my wheel or a loose screw at the back that I need to work on, but that tiny sound is not a problem at all. The bobbin fills up evenly, it spins beautifully, I can see the fiber between the spokes when the bobbin is filled up more which is just pretty, they hold a ton of yarn, and there is no annoying rattling sound. I honestly think I’m going to pick up at least 2-3 more of these bobbins once they are officially on sale. (Probably 3 if a 3-ply is going to be my new default spin I’ll need something to ply onto).

That’s it for this past week, so much more to come next week! Happy Crafting!

I still don’t have any sugar free kool aid, so the sprinkling has not been tested. Darn life getting in the way! Unfortunately the blue wool wound up getting some rust since the pan completely dried out and began to rust a bit. That’s what I get for buying cheap pans, but it is a good lesson for the classes I’m teaching. Take your wool out to let it drip dry. So I had to throw out the blue wool (I might have been able to scour it but didn’t really want to mess with it). Before I did that though, I did try and rinse out the Kool-Aid, and it did not move an inch. The dye seems to have stuck to the wool despite the lack of heat. This makes sense since there are individuals that Ice Dye with Kool-Aid and then do not seem to add heat. I’m very pleased, and I will have to try this again when I have a free weekend and can do all of the steps in a day or two instead of a few days later.

Result: You can dye with kool-aid and no heat. It does remain in the wool, however you want to take it out of your pan to dry, and rinse within a day or two.

As you can probably tell, two pouches of the strawberry-kiwi kool-aid did not do much for an 8″ round pan of soaked wool. It only saturated a few places on the wool, I expected it to go much further. I plan on seeing if this much color will adhere to the fiber without heat before either using more Kool-Aid or rinsing out the other pan of wool. It does not show as clearly in this picture as it does in person, but this is actually a very pale green color. While it shows up as a striking contrast in this picture it barely shows in person.

The blue raspberry kool-aid on the other hand shows up as an amazingly vibrant blue, in the few places that the two pouches covered. This is an example of trying to keep what color I did manage. I am more willing to lose the little bit of green than I am this pretty blue shade.

It has been a couple of days and I am still chickening out on rinsing these out, tomorrow I will have to bite the bullet and see if the green has remained. Wish me luck, I’ll post an update then.

Ply Magazine, to celebrate their first book, is going to be hosting a Year-Long Spin-Along. 51 Weeks of chances to win a year-long subscription to their magazine. Being honest with myself, I cannot express how very happy I am that I pre-ordered this book before I even knew about the contest. Now I get to participate, you can without purchase, follow along, and I saved $4 off of the cover price, lol. This brings my thrifty heart a great deal of joy. More importantly than all of that, this will bring 51 weeks of challenges to one extent or another. The first few are easy enough, but I hope I will be able to get to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival this year so I can pick up some supplies for a few of the challenges. Spinning a dual coated sheep will be interesting, but I have to find a source for the outer coat, a source for the inner coat, and a source where I can buy both coats mixed together. Likewise with the lock spinning, I can find them, but my thrifty soul has issues with spending $10+ on an ounce of locks (very pretty locks don’t get me wrong) then another $5+ for shipping and handling. If I can get a good price on some pretty locks at the festival then go me. If I cannot get there this year, that is up in the air and I’ll blog when I know, then I’ll have to suck it up and find some good sales.